This past weekend, Little Orbit CEO Matthew Scott hinted at an upcoming feature release for APB Reloaded, which was noted as part of the studio’s overall effort to bring the old game up to a 64-bit standard. “Wouldn’t it be cool to launch Phase 1 of the next big feature?” he teased at the time. Well we now know what that big feature is: the first version of the game’s reconstructed matchmaking system that is now live.
The associated patch notes point out that this is phase one of matchmaking’s move off of the district server logic, with the promise of more iteration and features added later. Mathcmaking’s push to the live game comes after “many months” of development and testing, and has been released because the studio feels it’s now at a point where wider player testing has to begin.
On top of matchmaking’s overhaul, the patch has also disabled VIP missions in fight club and mission districts, adjusts fight club matches to require only one member of each faction to start, and makes a couple of vehicle-specific updates. The patch notes aren’t exactly mighty, but as Scott himself pointed out, “matches are the heart of APB, and they have long needed an overhaul.”
